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Not much time to post. It's been a heckuva weekend, but wanted to post a picture of Mr. Bee's finished Maple Leaf socks and an awesome lighthouse tapestry that I found at a yardsale this weekend for $2! It totally goes in our Master Bedroom!

Went yard sale-ing and to the Alpaca festival on Saturday with friend-D and then Mr. Bee's folks came down from Marshfield way today for a visit so we went to lunch and to see Mr. Bee's new office....and played with Ben of course! Was a nice day. Now I'm going to catch up on laundry!

I stayed home from work today-my cold is at it's peak. It's actually gotten better as today has worn on. But it was a nasty, rainy cold day and both me and Ben had our grump on so we curled up on the sofa and watched daytime t.v.. That's enough to make anyone get better and back to work in a hurry.

Ben is a pretty big guy as you can see by the stretched out picture, but he can fold himself into a pretty small package if it means he gets to share the loveseat with Mommy.

First the back feet....Then the front feet...See! I don't take up any room at all!

I picked up a groovy new tip when making Mr. Bee's Maple Socks. (I turned the heel and picked up the gusset on the first one tonight so pictures will come soon I swear-maybe even on the lovely Mr. Bee's muscular calf!) When casting on socks or mittens or anything where you want a loose cast on, hold two needles together and cast the stitches over both. Once you have cast all of them on, remove one needle. Wa-la! Perfectly loose cast on stitches all the same size to divide as you see fit! What? You already knew that? Well why didn't someone tell me? Come on! Must I learn everything on the streets?

I feel like crap on a cracker today! My big boss came in hacking, wheezing, coughing, and rasping all over us last week and now I have it. She claimed it was allergies…yeah right! I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open, my throat burns and the glands in my neck are swollen and painful. Got to love working in an open office environment! If you have the sick days, use ‘em, People!

There is good news today! I was visiting Crazy Aunt Purl’s site and discovered that she wrote herself a book! It’s called ‘Drunk, Divorced and Covered In Cat Hair’ by Laurie Perry and is about her experiences after her divorce and how she started knitting to soothe her panicked soul. If it’s even a schmidge as hysterical as her blog, it will be worth its weight in gold! I can’t wait! And it’s scheduled to come out on October 15th! Happy Birthday to me!

I still haven’t taken a picture of Mr. Bee’s Maple Leaf socks but I will. It’s a really neat pattern where you make holes for a few rows and then pull loop…

Two posts in one day! We went to the Valley Of The Kings today to see the rescued lions, tigers and (yes) bears as well as the horses, pigs, camel, cougars, panther, wolves, foxes and goats. What an amazing place. What an amazing bunch of folks that give their time and money to take care of them all. All of the animals are well fed and well cared for now although many bear the battle scars of their lives before coming to the sanctuary. There are over fifty big cats. The stories of how they got there are so tragic. It angers me so much to think about how humans can be so mean and ignorant.

This is a picture of my favorite lion sunning herself. It's also my new background on my desktop.

This absolutely gorgeous fellow is Charlie. A Hollywood handler had all of his claws and teeth removed so that he would be safer to work with. Now he can't have any companions because he can't defend himself in skirmishes and he has to have a special diet because he can't chew. There are n…

At last, spring has sprung. Yesterday it was 70°. Mr. Bee and I had the day off and we rambled far and wide in the beautiful spring weather. Our magnolia burst into bloom. All was well with the world. I went to Knit Night at The Sow's Ear last night. It was jam packed. We all had a great time. There was a Knitters' Craft Fair in the back room that featured beautiful hand-made knitting baskets, jewelry, and gorgeous, glass, knitting needles. I didn't get any of the needles because with my penchant for throwing things. I figured they'd just make me even more of a danger to myself and others, but they were works or art that's for sure. A knitting friend said that they should be made into a beautiful mobile rather than be used for knitting! I managed to stay up late with the big kids and got a huge chunk of Mr. Bee's boot socks done. I am using the Maple Leaf pattern from the Men Knits Winter 06 magazine. It's really pretty....um that is to say.....handsome in …

YAY! It's Mr. Bee's birthday!!!!! He opened his gifts this morning. I got him a membership to Valley Of The Kings Large Cat Sanctuary and Retreat in Sharon, WI. They rescue tigers and lions and other large exotics from zoos and other places where they are mistreated or not properly taken care of. They live out the remainder of their lives being safe and cared for at the sanctuary.

Mr. Bee LOVES tigers. Now he can go visit them any weekend for the next year! They have work days when you can help with building pens etc. if you're interested or he can just visit. You can take friends and family with you. It's not open to the public unless you're a member. I've been so excited about this because not many folks seem to have heard about it and it's such a unique opportunity for him to get face time and help out with his favorite animals. We are going on Saturday to visit for the first time and see what it's all about. He was so happy he teared up. And around h…

Since I joined the "Purling Puppies' web ring today, here is a gratuitous picture of Bentley practicing his 'Polite Puppies Wait To Be Invited To Go Outside' command. It just about kills him when he can hear other dogs and kids outside, but he does it! I wish you could hear the 'poor, pathetic, me' whining!

So I told Mr. Bee to keep this Saturday open; that we would be taking a trip for his birthday. I wouldn't tell him where or when or why-'cause it's a surprise. So he says to keep October 14th open because he 'already has my birthday present.' I mean it's cool that he thinks so far ahead, but to torture me with it for 6 months in advance seems a little mean! So I've been guessing (which is what he wants me to do) big things like my new car will be delivered to the house that day, or we will be jetting off to Ireland for a month. So far I haven't guessed it! ;-)

Finally finished my 'Cardinals In Maine Pines' quilt! Each cardinal is appliqued on and has embroidered pine branches and bead work under it. That's what took so long. But it was apropos that just as I finished it, I could hear two male cardinals battling for territory in the back yard.

So after I finished I was itching to see what I could start next. I went downstairs to poke around my quilty kingdom and found that I need to :

Rip out all of the machine quilting I did on my 'Robbing Peter to Pay Jack' quilt. I really muffed it and there are a lot of warps so it's back to the drawing board on that one.

Tack all of my elements down on 'Mattawamkeag Lake Landscape', put a border on, batt and quilt it.

Finish machine quilting the 'Loons In The Cove' wall hanging.

And last but not least, batt, back and tack this Dutchman's Puzzle couch throw.

Ummmm...so I guess I won't be starting anything new for a while even though I have eleventy-million ideas…

It’s snowing this morning. We could get 7-10 inches before it stops. Looks like summer will be held from 2:00-4:00PM on July 9th this year! We’re both tired or cold and shoveling. I came into the kitchen this morning and saw Mr. Bee standing by the sliding glass door watching Big Doggie out on the deck. He stood there for quite and I started to get concerned:

ME: Whatchadoin’?MR. BEE (dispassionately): Watching Bentley eat snow.ME: You know it’s probably not that great for him to eat a lot of snow.MR. BEE: I know… but he’s almost finished with the deck.

I fully expect Mr. Bee to let him have a go the driveway after work!

We went with friends to see the Blue Man Group at The Kohl Center last night. I didn’t like the opening act at all. He was one of those young-whipper-snapper-record-scratching guys. Those of us that grew up counting on vinyl for our tunes were highly agitated. You remember the days….sitting around with friends, listening to the latest Arrowsmith LP….someone bumps the hi…

They're done! They're done! The Stinking Socks are done! I've been glad to get projects done before but never so much as these socks made with that stinking yarn! Now that I've done my little Snoopy Dance... Happy Easter Everyone! Hope everyone survived the ham overload and all of the kids and their sugar highs. We kept it low key this year. We went to Quivey's Grove for a wonderful Easter Brunch with friends D and T. Then they came over to meet our newest furbaby. He was his delightful-please-please-won'tcha-snuggle-me self. They did and he rewarded them with slobbering all over their Easter finery. Ah...puppy love. Sometimes it's soggy going. We cleaned in the basement some and then took a break and went to Mount Horeb to score a geocache. It was to be Ben's first adventure as 'GeoDog' so we got all of our winter duds on since it's in the 30°s, got the cache coordinates loaded in the GPS. Got new batteries in the camera. (Gotta document his …

A new guy started at work today. I found out he was from Maine so I went over to introduce myself. He's originally from Iowa but we both attended UMO and he stayed on for seven years. I told him that I was from The County. Turns out he worked at the greenhouses that are right next to my Mum's house. How cool is that! It really is a small world!

Made me a little homesick though so I dug out my new favorite cookbook 'Recipes from a Small Island'. It's by Linda Greenlaw. She was the swordfish boat captain from the book/movie "A Perfect Storm. She lives on Isle Au Haut, Maine now and she and her mum wrote this cookbook together. I scrounged up all of the ingredients and rationed out one of my tins of Maine blueberries and made the blueberry cupcakes with lemon glaze. They smell heavenly. Mr. Bee had his gaming group, The Noisy Boys, over tonight, so as soon as they cool, I will take some down to the depths of their basement lair and try them out on them. Will let y…

I got the most fascinating book from the library tonight. I've skimmed it and am now settling down to really get into it. It is Traditional Knitting by Michael Pearson. It's out of print now I think and it looks like used copies online are pretty spendy. I am fortunate to have stumbled on it at the library. Pearson traveled all around the remote fishing villages of Eastern Scotland, and Northern England to document traditional knitting patterns. The book is full of wonderful history and photos of gansey and Fair Isle patterns. If you are intereted in ganseys (my new pet interest) this is a definite read. Not sure how reliable it would be in the way of the patterns but the history is amazing!

In the fiction realm, I am almost finished with Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. I'm not a SciFi fan per se, but this is a GREAT book. It's futuristic earth so there are no funky aliens from weird planets in imaginary galaxies or fairies riding unicorns or anything. I have just sucke…

Today is a hard day. My Dad died of cancer on April 1, 1999. Most of the time it seems 100 years ago, but on April 1st and November 1st (his b-day) it seems like yesterday and all the old feelings come back; good and bad. I miss him terribly. Cancer is a horrible, evil, awful thing. No one should have to go through that-ever.

Horrendous storms rolled through last night spawning tornadoes. I hate when they come at night. If you can see it coming it's not so scary somehow. Thank goodness for the advances in weather technology. Our local news guy can pinpoint bad weather to street level but the nighttime ones are still the worst for me. One of the tornadoes last night was about 10 minutes away.

Today is cold and windy and rainy to make the day even more bleak, so I decided to clean my quilt room and work a little more on my Eleanor Burns quilt. It's from her Quilts For All Seasons Book. It's still in progress so forgive the wrinkles. It gets pretty mussed up due to all of the h…